Retail Spotlight: Longtime downtown retailer Present Perfect to close

View full sizeLaura Gunderson/The OregonianPresent Perfect will close Monday, June 18, and open Tuesday with all of its goods half-off. The liquidation sale will continue through July with decorations from various holidays being added to the line-up each week.

Jean Stephens glances at the comments she's written down over the years from her loyal customers:

"I can't believe I found you," one said of Stephens' card and gift store, Present Perfect, in downtown Portland.

"This is where I come to treat myself," said another.

Stephens smiles at how nice it was to hear those words -- "before we made our decision to close."

"Now," she said, "it's just really hard."

After 30 years in business, Stephens and her best friend and co-owner Fran Ranta, plan to retire and close their store after a liquidation sale set to begin Tuesday. Seasonal merchandise will be added weekly to the mix, including fall and Halloween on June 25; winter holidays on July 2; Valentine's, St. Patrick's Day and Easter on July 16; and fixtures and displays on July 23.

A divorce led Stephens back into retail in 1982. She'd been out of the workforce as a stay-at-home mom and realized she could work a limited number of jobs for someone else, or go into business for herself. Ranta, who'd worked with Stephens on several school projects and fund-raisers, jumped in and the business was launched with $35,000 worth of inventory in an 860-square-foot spot at the new Yamhill Marketplace.

Five years later, the pair doubled their space at the marketplace on Southwest Second Avenue and added a selection of greeting cards. Then a new developer came calling in 1989 with plans for a mall in Portland's "living room" and Stephens and Ranta jumped.

View full sizeLaura Gunderson/The OregonianPresent Perfect owner Jean Stephens says she hears from customers all the time who say they have trouble finding good card and paper stores in Portland.

Present Perfect moved into Pioneer Place and stayed 15 years, basking in some of the boom times that brought the little store a few years with million-dollar sales. Yet as many small, independent retailers can attest, the push and pull of a corporate-owned mall took its toll. In 2007, Present Perfect moved to its current location facing Southwest Washington Street at Third Avenue.

With a vast selection of locally designed cards, gift wrap, stickers and gifts, the store took a hit during the recession, Stephens said. She and her partner could have weathered the sustained economic storm, she said, yet it's come at a time in both of their lives when they need to spend more time caring for loved ones.

And maybe reading and attempting some day hikes.

"I'm not a real cry-y person," Stephens said, seeming to fog up a bit behind the purple frames of her glasses. "But I just placed my last special order -- kind of a strange thing to get verklempt about, I know.